Central to our understanding of why people play digital games (either video or computer games) is to understand the reason people want to “play” a game in the first place. Playing, once reserved for only real-life interactions among people, is now the venue for interacting with digital manifestations of reality; but the question remains, is this digital-based playing different than real-based playing? The purpose of this study was to investigate the patterns of motivation and usage by card, role-playing, computer, and board game players, known in this study as hobby game players. Through an online survey, we measured the reasons people play these games, as well as the milieu in which they play these games are played. What does the game player like in a game? Why does the gamer like this? What motivates continued game play and preferences for types of games? The results indicate that digital game playing shares several underlying motivations with its pre-digital predecessors, but in ways that are still different than tabletop gaming.